Overview
- Official responses from all 23 IITs show 53 student deaths between 2020–21 and 2024–25, including 45 suicides and eight other unnatural deaths.
- More than half of the deaths involved students from Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe and Other Backward Class groups, with 29 of 53 total deaths falling in those categories.
- Reported deaths rose sharply in the last two years of the period, with 17 in 2023–24 and 19 in 2024–25, reversing earlier stable counts of five to six per year.
- The data was compiled after a Department of Higher Education request on December 1, 2025 for a provisionally admitted Lok Sabha question but was not tabled in Parliament, a point the Congress party has seized to allege concealment.
- A suicide at IIT Bombay on September 18 triggered campus protests, a Mumbai Police Crime Branch investigation and administrative action, and experts say limited counselling (108 counsellors across 23 campuses) and structural factors make prevention and reform urgent.